SNAP 2015: International Printmaking Symposium

Between 12 and 15 November 2015 the print association Druckvereinigung Bentlage e.V. held its third International Printmaking Symposium SNAP 2015 in cooperation with the cultural institution Kloster Bentlage gGmbH in Germany and the AKI ArtEZ Institute of the Arts in the Netherlands. The two previous symposia focused on the position of contemporary printmaking between traditional methods and the digital future, and the role of printmaking in the international art world. This symposium examined questions concerning the subject Kunstraum Druckgrafik: Printmaking in Other Forms of Art. Specifically, it addressed how various modes of expression in contemporary printmaking combine or overlap with other art disciplines, such as sculpture, painting, installation, film, paper art and laser cut. It also illustrated the increasing significance of the interaction of printmaking with other areas of art in fine art educational institutions in Europe and elsewhere. From a historical viewpoint, printmaking has always been a hybrid medium that has adapted to current technology. Printing was and remains a means of spreading ideas and information, and a catalyst for social change.

CCW Professor Paul Coldwell was invited to give the keynote, called Print, making and the work of art alone.My paper considered the relationship of print to the transmission of ideas through the multiple. This includes the changing role of the print studio and how artists are increasingly viewing print as an opportunity to produce work, which is distinct and resolved within the medium of print.’

Chelsea MA Fine Art 2013 alumna Tanja Engelberts was asked to participate at the Haus der Niederlande with two other artists from the Netherlands in one of the exhibitions linked to the SNAP symposium. She exhibited a work called Seance, which she made on the MA Fine Art course at Chelsea.

After she completed her degree, Engelberts won the Clifford Chance sculpture award, where she displayed the Island a work exploring escapism within a corporate architectural environment, while simultaneously investigating the relationship between sculpture and photographic imagery. A stipend for emerging artist from the Mondrian Fund (Dutch art council) enabled her to develop different projects including a residency at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming USA, a commissioned work for Scheveningen prison commemorating its second world war history and various group and solo exhibitions.

Currently Tanja Engelberts lives and works in the The Hague NL, where she is preparing an expedition to a North Sea drilling site in order to research the economic, ecologic and human presence on a seemingly empty space.

 

Top Image: Seance by Tanja Engelberts

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